


Obstacles

by Marsalias



Series: Phic Phight 2020 [17]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen, as per usual, i did this prompt twice, me taking a sharp left into worldbuilding, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23923558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marsalias/pseuds/Marsalias
Summary: Ghosts kidnap Danny and a GIW agent because... why, exactly?
Series: Phic Phight 2020 [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685794
Comments: 23
Kudos: 326
Collections: Phic Phight!





	Obstacles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UnluckyAlis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnluckyAlis/gifts).



Based on a prompt by UnluckyAlis (aka kinglazrus)! A Phic Phight Phic!

.

Before Danny even opened his eyes, he knew he was about to have a bad day. This was primarily because he wasn't in his nice, comfortable bed, which was where he last remembered being. No. Right now he was propped up against a cold, hard wall.

He was also gagged, with something extensive that went all the way into his nose and throat and rested uncomfortably against his vocal cords. Not that it was resting comfortably against any other part of his face or mouth. His jaw had been forced all the way open and everything aches.

This lead to a number of conclusions: One, he had, yet again, been kidnapped, and, two, his current kidnappers are probably aware of his ghost powers. Otherwise, they wouldn't see the need for such an elaborate gag.

Danny believed he was also tied up or chained, but, due to sensory fatigue and his general disinclination to open his eyes or otherwise move, he hadn't checked yet.

He really hated being kidnapped. He was also sleep deprived. His kidnappers could wait.

(Or were those the drugs talking? He had to assume he was drugged, to get him here.)

"Hey!" hissed a sharp, male voice. "Hey, kid!"

Apparently, his kidnappers didn't agree. Ugh. On top of everything, he had to get rude kidnappers. Couldn't he get polite kidnappers for once? The kind that would treat him like an honored guest, except for letting him leave? Or who at least would let him have a bed? He'd still hate it, of course, but he'd be more comfortable while plotting his escape.

"Kid!" said the voice, more urgently.

Jeez. Couldn't they wait? Danny wasn't going anywhere. That they knew about, anyway. Since, obviously, he wasn't going to stay here. For long. Hopefully.

Something jangled and the voice grunted. Internally, Danny rolled his eyes. What were they even doing? Worst kidnapping ever. Zero out of five stars. Would not repeat.

Must be a new kidnapper, then. Didn't know the ropes. He giggled internally. It was better when kidnappers didn't know the ropes. That meant they were easier to untie.

Actually, wait. That jangle... That sounded disturbingly like someone else in chains.

Great. So he had a kidnapping buddy. A kidnapee buddy? Whatever. A fellow victim. Yay. Joy. Someone Danny would have to rescue without revealing his secret. At least, the voice sounded human.

The guy had probably never been kidnapped before. Most humans hadn't been. Danny didn't know about ghosts. Ghosts got up to some weird stuff in ghost land.

Ghost land. Wow. These guys had really laid on the drugs, huh?

If he were alone, Danny would would have pretended to sleep until the drugs completely wore off and he could think clearly and move properly. But he wasn't alone. He needed to know what and who he was working with.

He forced his eyes open, despite how heavy and sticky they felt. What he could see, that is, nothing, didn't change. He blinked, several times, then shook his head. This revealed that, in addition to the gag, he had been blindfolded. Also, he had been right about being chained up. There was a collar around his neck. He reached up, but the chains shackled to his wrists weren't long enough for him to reach.

Well, Danny officially hated this.

"Hey, hey, kid, don't panic, don't panic. Breathe in, breathe out, okay?"

Danny rolled his eyes. _He_ wasn't panicking.

"If you can understand me, uh, nod, or something."

Not the best way of communicating, but, whatever. He didn't have a lot of options. He nodded.

"Good, good. So, uh, you're probably wondering what's going on."

Danny nodded, and tried to point at his face.

"Well, they've got sort of a mask over your whole face, kind of like that one movie, you know, with the French king? Except yours has a hole where your mouth is, and I guess you can feel that, because it looks like it's going _in_ to your mouth. Yeah. And no eye holes. And from my side of the room, it looks like it's locked on, from behind."

The man stopped. If Danny had use of his vocal cords, he would have groaned. While he had wanted to know what was on his face, that wasn't _all_ he wanted to know, and, honestly, that should have been immediately obvious.

This guy wasn't very good at being kidnapped.

Danny rotated his hand in a gesture he hoped would be interpreted as 'continue.' His wrist chafed on the inside of the cuff.

"Anyway, the people who have us... They aren't people. Are you from Amity Park?"

Danny nodded. He already knew where this was going.

"Thank god. I was worried you'd think I was crazy. We've been kidnapped by ghosts. Don't worry, though! I'm a GIW agent! We're trained to fight ghosts!"

The guy, the actual _Guy,_ the agent, kept going on about how he'd rescue them, or how the GIW would come and get them and fight off all the evil, kidnapping ghosts, but Danny was too busy trying to keep his heart rate under control to pay attention.

Danny could handle being kidnapped. He had done it before. But escaping with a GIW agent? Without blowing his secret? That was a different story, and he suspected it was one his kidnappers were fully aware of.

His jaw clenched painfully hard around the gag, but he couldn't relax his muscles. He was aware that he was shaking.

A single, presumably tied up, GIW could scare him this much when the prospect of being kidnapped by unknown ghosts hadn't fazed him at all. It was hilariously pathetic.

The GIW agent, judging by his continued reassurances as to the prowess of the GIW, hadn't noticed Danny's panic. Good. Great. Perfect. At least he was oblivious.

Danny felt the ghost coming, icy mist clouding his lungs, long before the agent saw anything. It was obvious when the agent _did_ see something, because he stopped talking in the middle of a sentence about how 'the GIW are looking for us even now!'

Reassuring. Not.

Something creaked, high-pitched enough for him to hunch his shoulders around his sensitive ears. A door opening? A swirl of air seemed to confirm that.

He hated this so much. He didn't even have his go-to coping mechanism: sarcasm. Well, he had internal sarcasm, but that just wasn't the same.

It would also be a lot easier to figure out how to escape if he could _see_.

The ghost wasn't walking, didn't make any sound or move the air, but Danny could still track their silent presence moving around the room. Just a perk of being him. Well, that and his ghost sense.

The ghost began speaking, but not in English. _"Do not be so afraid, little one,"_ she said in a ghostly language that had always reminded Danny of spiders. Ghostly claws skimmed the soft skin beneath his chin, and he tilted his head up, reflexively, away from the touch. _"I swear on my own grave and the Black River, we will do you no damage we cannot repair."_

Reassuring. Not. Wow. This ghost and the GIW agent were much more similar than one might think on first... listen? Not sight. Well, probably sight, too, unless this ghost was a Walker lookalike, but Danny couldn't exactly confirm that right now.

 _"You may have deduced by now that the fool is here to prevent you from fighting your way free. We know you are clever."_ The claws poked him again, and he leaned away farther, pressing the top of his head into the wall.

"Hey!" said the agent. "Leave the kid alone! Pick on someone your own size!"

The ghost ignored him. _"While we have no quarrel with you, we require your presence. At the end, we shall return you to your home, and, should you desire it, we shall return the fool as well."_ She was pushing against Danny's chin with the back of her claws, pushing his head as far back as it could go. The collar pushed sharply against the nape of his neck. He squirmed. _"This, we promise."_

Then she dumped something down his throat. At least, he really hoped it was something she 'dumped' as in, from a bottle, rather than, say, for example, _drool,_ but Danny couldn't exactly tell, either way. All he knew was that something liquid had hit the back of his throat, and now he was choking and sputtering, trying not to inhale it. He didn't have much choice about swallowing it.

His throat and the back of his nose burned. He wheezed, gasping for breath that, strictly speaking, he didn't need, and tipped sideways. He caught on the collar's chain and nearly strangled himself, but the ghost had mercy and pulled him back upright.

 _"Cooperate,"_ said the ghost, _"this will all be over soon."_

There was a tug on his collar from the other direction and a clank. Was there a chain on the front of the collar? He tried, weakly, to twitch away. The chain went taught.

This was not ideal.

"It's okay, it's okay, kid," said the agent. "The ghost- it's just chaining us together, that's all. I think."

Abruptly, the chains attaching Danny to the wall vanished. The chain on the front of the collar tugged him forward, and he almost toppled. Not 'just chaining them together,' then. Why did he have to be stuck with this guy? Why not someone actually useful? Like Mr. Lancer? Or Tucker's mom? Heck, he'd take Dash. At least Dash would have his back if he found out Danny was Phantom.

The chain tugged up, and Danny struggled to his feet which were, predictably, asleep. His knees felt weird. He was tugged forward, slowly, but insistently. It took a few seconds for Danny to register what was happening.

The ghost was using the chain as a leash, leading him, and presumably the agent, out of the room. His shoulder hit something warm and alive, and he almost fell, but a pair of human hands steadied him.

"Sorry, kid," muttered the agent. "I don't know what's going on. The ghost came in and talked in that gibberish before, but this is the first time I've been out since I woke up."

Danny focused on not falling, after that. He didn't want the agent to touch him again.

This was humiliating.

(Also, what had the ghost put down his throat? He'd been thinking 'drug,' but he didn't feel any different. Yet.)

The air grew warmer as they walked down hallways and navigated up stairs. Hisses and whispers of ghostly speech caught on Danny's ears, but the snippets he caught weren't enough to explain anything to him. The few he could interpret were about housekeeping and cleaning.

Then they passed through a doorway into a room where the air was hot, wet, and floral. A greenhouse? A solarium? A garden? A jungle? It didn't smell as earthy as Sam's greenhouse, the odor was... sharper, more chemical, but Danny knew Sam liked to keep her plants as natural as possible. It might not mean anything.

Beneath his feet, though, the floor was tile, smooth and glazed. That didn't strike him as something that would be used in a greenhouse, or even a garden. Definitely not a jungle. Although... ghosts were weird. They often blended natural and unnatural in ways humans wouldn't.

 _"You know what you must do,"_ said the ghost.

 _"Yes, mistress,"_ answered a chorus of ghostly voice, both male and female.

He was pulled forward one last time and suddenly there were hands on him. Many hands, tugging at his clothes.

"Hey!" said the agent. "What is this? What are you doing? I'm not going in there! I'm perfectly- I'm perfectly clean! No bath! Back off!"

There was a great tug on Danny's neck and he went sprawling. The ghosts hissed.

"Oh, hell, kid, I'm sorry, I- stop touching me!"

Danny reached up and grabbed a section of chain, giving himself a little slack. The ghosts converged on him again, and he froze, tensing for signs that he was about to get beaten up.

Instead, they started to cut away his clothes, which was bad in a completely different and terrifying way. The agent loudly protested similar treatment.

 _"For your bath,"_ said one of the ghosts.

Oh, that made it _so_ much better. Except it didn't. What the heck did these ghosts want him for that required a bath?

The bath was- Well, it was a bath. A bath where he couldn't see or close his mouth or nose. A bath where he had to let a bunch of people who had kidnapped him touch him. A bath where he was increasingly affected by whatever drug he had been given. He could feel parts of his mind going soft and docile, feel his ghost-child instinct to submit to adult ghosts unexpectedly kick into gear.

Worse, the bath attendants apparently thought he was funny, or cute, or something. They kept giggling. Danny wanted nothing to do with it.

Except... the drug apparently had yet to reach its full effect, and, gradually, Danny found that he did. He wanted them to be happy. He wanted them to like him.

At least, parts of him did. The rest was furious.

Eventually, he was toweled off and brought back to the GIW agent, whom he had all but forgotten.

"Damn, kid, whatever drug they gave you really did a number on you, huh?" he asked.

Danny couldn't exactly respond. They were led away, back inside the building, where it was dry, and they were dressed. At least, Danny was dressed, and in something that felt thin and gauzy. Then they were moved yet again.

At some point, Danny wasn't sure when, what with the gag and blindfold, the first ghost came back. Danny was starting to have trouble understanding words They all felt like they were underwater, and he was becoming very unsteady on his feet, even without being pulled along.

The ghost, the first ghost, was touching him, tracing over his bones, mumbling things. He tried to hold still. He really did.

Something new was dumped down his throat, and his legs abruptly decided that they weren't going to support his weight anymore. He dropped to the floor, taking the agent with him.

" _Follow the lights,"_ said the ghost. " _Find the sun. There is a key in the crawlspace."_

Then she left. She left him alone.

Alone with the agent. Which was _bad bad bad bad bad_.

The agent came closer, and Danny hissed, but he couldn't exactly fight back in his current state. Soon, the agent had him pinned, and he was doing _something_ to the gag and blindfold, and it _hurt_ every time the piece in his throat moved.

But then- it was gone. The agent had, somehow, managed to remove it. The blindfold followed shortly after. Danny spent several long seconds just breathing and blinking, adjusting to his newfound freedom and returned senses.

Being able to see grounded him in reality somewhat. He sat up, only vaguely listening to the agent. The room they were in was cavernous and dark, lit only by a dim chain of lights on the ground that incongruously reminded him of the floor lights at a movie theater. They lead into a tunnel at the far end of the room and out of sight.

Well, now he knew where he was. He groaned.

"Kid? Are you alright?"

"No," said Danny, hoarsely. He decided not to ask the agent's name, because then the agent would ask for his. He looked the agent up and down. "They gave you a knife?"

"Yeah," said the agent, frowning at the sleek metal thing.

The reflections made Danny's eyes hurt. This was a bad trip. He never wanted to take drugs, especially these drugs, ever again.

"You should get rid of it," said Danny, recalling some of the 'rules' this particular ghostly ritual had.

"It's our only weapon."

"Do you really trust something a ghost gave you?" Danny said, trying to inject disgust into his tone. It worked too well and almost gagged. "It's probably cursed. Why else would they give it to you?"

The agent, as expected, tossed the knife away like it had suddenly turned into a snake.

Danny swallowed hard, fighting back a wave of dizziness. He could feel his ghost half sparkling under his skin, and the impulse to do what the nice lady from before said beating with his heart. The darkness crawled with herringbone patterns, pointing on.

"Okay," said the agent. "Okay. So, we've got to get out of here, and I don't fancy taking the path they've lit up for us, so let's feel around, see if there's anything off to the sides." He stood up, dragging Danny with him.

"We've gotta follow the lights," said Danny. He swayed. "They're-" he coughed. "My parents research ghost legends, and I think I know what this is."

"Right, you're the Fenton kid, aren't you?"

Danny shrugged. Figures the guy would know.

"Well, what is it?"

"They want us to find the sun." Danny blinked hard as a memory of light blinded him. " _A_ sun. Their sun. They want us, probably me, really, to find their sun. Because it's their new year. It goes to sleep. Beddy-bye." He yawned.

"Stay awake," said the agent.

Danny shook himself. "They want us to wake it up."

"And the bath is because...?"

"Ritual puri-purification," said Danny, stumbling over the word. "The drugs, too, I guess. We need to be clean, or we'll be burnt up and they'll send someone else." He rubbed his eyes. Speaking of ritual purity, would his status as a half ghost keep him from actually attaining that?

It didn't matter. The drugs in his system were driving him on. His bones were practically vibrating with them. He had to go. He had to follow the lights.

He stumbled forward and tugged on the chain. The agent obviously didn't want to come, but just as obviously there weren't all that many choices. He followed.

It was hard to follow the little lights. They hovered, intangible, just above the ground and made all of the shadows weird. Danny wished he could summon an ectolight, but his fingernails hurt and the agent was right behind him. Stalking him. Waiting for him to trip up.

They reached a wall studded with lights. "We have to go over," said Danny, craning back his head.

The agent grunted unhappily. "I'll boost you up, but don't go over the side or we'll both be strangled."

"Uhuh," said Danny. He didn't need to breathe.

It might have tempted him, at the top of the wall, to go over and _get rid of_ the agent. He wasn't sure. It could have just been the drugs talking. It could have been the call of the void. He didn't know, and he felt so guilty that the weight of it bore him into a hunch and turned the agent's words into gibberish.

There were other obstacles, beyond the agent, beyond the wall. There was a glowing river full of skeletal fish. A field of mushrooms with purple-glowing gills. A monster that chased them until they passed through a door to small for it.

The lights led to a tiny hole, barely large enough for Danny to crawl through. A green-yellow light flickered in the depths.

The agent started to curse. "I can't fit in there," he finish, finally.

"I can," said Danny. "That's why they want children, I guess."

"This chain isn't long enough."

"There's a key in the tunnel," said Danny.

"How do you know?" the agent sounded suspicious.

"The ghost lady whispered it to me," said Danny. He didn't really want to see her again. He was fairly certain that the drug was still running strong in his system, and that he would be ludicrously pliant with whatever an adult ghost, any adult ghost, told him to do at the moment.

He didn't want to see their sun, either. They were probably a ghost in their own right. A powerful one.

But he did want that key.

"No," said the agent, shaking his head. "There has to be another way. This is a trap. Like the knife." He started backing away.

Danny dove for the tunnel.

He got about a quarter of the way down when the agent found the presence of mind to haul him back with the chain. Danny grabbed it with both hands and braced himself against the walls of the tunnel. He could see the glimmer of a key, less than an arm's reach away.

He pulled, reaching, trying to get it. Despite his best efforts, the collar dug painfully into his neck. The agent was shouting but he was under water again. Danny didn't care. He wanted that key.

He got it.

Finding the key _hole_ was a whole other ordeal, but he got that, too, and then he was free. He shot down the tunnel, into-

Sunlight.

He froze. There was a giant, burning skeleton in the cave in front of him. Its bones were an incandescent white. It had curled into a ball. Sleeping.

This was the sun.

Danny could leave, now, though. He could phase through the floor, now that the collar was gone. He could go home and forget about the agent. Physically speaking.

Mentally? That was another story.

Besides, he was in the drugs grip again, and didn't he want to talk to the nice adult?

He shuffled closer to the sun skeleton. It felt hot, but not unbearably so. As he drew closer, he had to squeeze his eyes shut against the light. He reached out, and put his hand on one of the skeleton's bones.

The sun woke instantly.

.

The celebratory feast was one of the most bizarre events Danny had ever attended, and not just because he was high on ghost drugs. An unconscious GIW agent chained in the corner and a living 'sun' as the guest of honor had that effect, he supposed. Not to mention everyone's insistence on feeding him by hand.

At least he would be able to go home after this.

He hoped.


End file.
